Happy New Year from The Bloggerist's Daughter!

"Hold your tongue, ye flyting fools," said the Doctor; "and you, ye idle rascals, if I come out among you." So saying, he smacked his long-lashed whip with great emphasis, producing much the effect of the celebrated Quos ego of Neptune in the first AEneid.

Sir Hugh, or The Jew`s Daughter, a traditional English ballad

It rained a mist, it rained a mist
All o`er, all o`er the land;
And all the boys of our town,
Went out to toss their ball, ball, ball,
Went out to toss their ball.

At first they tossed their ball too high,
And then again too low;
And over into the Jew`s garden it went,
Where no one dared to go.

One little boy said, `I`ll not go in,
Unless my playmates do;
For l have heard whoever goes in,
Shall never come out again.`

Out came the Jew`s daughter, all dressed, all dressed,
All dressed in red so grand:
`Come in, little lad,` said she,
`You shall have your ball again.`

At first she showed him a big red apple,
And then a gay gold ring,
And then a cherry as red as blood,
To entice this little boy in.

She took hold of his little white hand,
And through the castle they went,
She penned him in the cellar below,
Where no one could hear him lament.

She pinned him in a napkin,
And pinned him very tight ;
And called for a vessel of brightest gold,
To catch his heart blood in.

`Please lay my Bible at my head,
My prayer-book at my feet;
And if my playmates ask for me,
Tell them that I `m asleep.

`O lay my prayer-book at my feet,
My Bible at my head;
And if my playmates ask for me,
Tell them that I am dead.`

Child #155
Collected from Violet Hiett in 1917
Printed in Folk-songs of the South

Chapter 1, Page 1, Sentence 1

"Prostitutes paraded up and down the busy street four abreast while the glowing fluorescent lights exploding from bars, chicken carry-outs, restaurants, stores and the bright headlights of passing cars illuminating the street against the darkness of the night."

Volume One:

THE GROCER'S DAUGHTER

"Chris Evans stood proud and erect, ready to receive his bride. Though by no means a tall man, he appeared big and powerful next to his petite wife-to-be. He was clean-shaven for the occasion"

CHAPTER 1

"'Somewhere East of Suez'? What the hell kind of name is that for a planet?" The ticket seller cocked her head, roused (for the moment) from her boredom. She looked the traveler over from behind the remote spaceport's counter, where people paid for passage when they didn't have access to the Empire's credit transfer system. Or when they didn't want to leave tracks.

"It's kind of a name an ex-soldier would give it, when he'd found a place to settle down and make a home for his family. That particular ex-soldier was one of my great-grandfathers." The traveler shook her silvering brown head, and smiled faintly. Distractedly, as if her mind had already rushed out across the light years and reached the world of her birth. She wouldn't say it was "at home" there, though. Not for half of her lifetime had Christabel thought about Somewhere East of Suez in those terms.

"Oh. I see." The seller went back to being bored.

"Not many people read the ancient Terran poet Kipling these days. The line's actually 'somewheres east of Suez,' because it's written in dialect. It means a place where society's rules don't apply." The traveler leaned across the counter to look at the monitor for herself. "So from here can I make a straight shot? Great! Thank you."

"Behind Mykella, her younger and taller sister Rachylana also dismounted, if reluctantly, as did two of the four Southern Guards, in their uniforms of spotless dark blue, assigned to guard them, for none of the three daughters of the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona went anywhere outside the palace without an escort."

"South Congregational Church was rapidly filling up. Sabine Heartwood eased herself into a pew beside Moe Condon, the editor of the weekly Pennywise Paper and her boss. It was a tight squeeze and Sabine felt a little awkward as her rump touched the massive thigh of her curmudgeonly employer. South Congo, as everyone called the church... White-painted pews with shellacked coamings, a simple preacher's lectern to one side of the plain wooden cross at the front of the nave, massive multi-light windows--open now to allow in the slight breeze, a faint lick of which tickled the back of Sabine's neck, ruffling the loose curling hairs not caught up in her twist."

"The late Rector had been at Dedmayne fifty years, and drank."

CONTENTS:

XVII The Unicorn Comes in the Starlight

"AD 2293. Late March."

Trouble's Daughter: The Story of Susanna Hutchinson, Indian Captive

"At about nine-thirty she heard a rifle shot off to the northeast and suspected Marcia had scored. Sarah glassed a group of about fifteen antelope running toward the south that unfortunately would not be coming close to her. The wind rose and she backed into the juniper bush for shelter, looking down at a jackrabbit skull and part of its skeleton. After a while during which Marcia gutted the animal, she was visible heading toward Sarah alternately carrying the antelope for a hundred yards then dragging it a hundred yards. That was true Marcia, Sarah thought. How many fifteen-year-old girls can carry a hundred pound antelope?"

"A splendid and very unusual entry into the private life of the distant past."
- New York Times Book Review

(The Scarecrow's Daughter)

'The end-run of an ancient plot against God required the services of an innocent-looking black Cadillac at the far end of Springfield Boulevard in Queens. Countless Jews and gentiles who loved God very much had woven together this plot over the ages.

. . .

"How did you know?"

"I'm gifted, and you're a schmuck."'

"The only child she's seen here is Cara Ferris."

"Can I play with her yet?" Abby asked. Cara lived next door, and had blond ringlets, and had marched at the head of the Fourth of July parade, twirling a baton, as Miss Hermosa Beach Recreation. Abby worshipped her.

"Not until you're better, sweetheart," Yvette said.

"But Cara's had chicken pox," the doctor said.

"Her mother said it was such a slight case she could get it again."

Dr. Nye made a little scoffing noise. "Just keep Abby home," he said, "and use calamine. I'll pronounce her not contagious as soon as I can, and she can play with Miss Recreation."

"But there was one patient in particular who kept popping up in his mind. It was a recent case from about a year ago, which he couldn't seem to shake. It involved a thirty-year-old, stand up comedian named David Freid, who had come to the hospital by court order after having stolen a caseload of sperm samples. What a truly odd individual, recalled Dr. Feinlein, smiling thoughtfully, as the warmth of the wine circulated through his veins. The judge thought David's problems were more psychiatric than criminal, and after their first session together, Dr. Feinlein was very much inclined to agree. Actually, David hadn't stolen the sperm sample as much as he had kidnapped them. He was holding them as ransom to win the love a girl. But this wasn't just any girl, recalled Dr. Feinlein, becoming suddenly enthused and eagerly taking out his notebook and pen. It was the daughter of his urologist, for crying out loud!"

Ms. Byrne pounded some more. Frustrated, she muttered, "Apparently not. He's supposed to have an Indian partner who lives near him. Willie Sees the Night, if you can believe that."

"Better than Willie Humps His Dog."

"Cute," she said dryly. "I wonder if this is the place."

"I bet it is," Hart said. "But it looks abandoned to me. Look at the weeds. Ass deep to a tall squaw."

"Whorehouse Meadow, Jump-Off Joe Creek. Now there's a classy address. Can you imagine the kind of people who live out here in all this isolation? What do they do?"

"They listen to the wind in the treetops. Ghosts. Whoooooooooooo! That and pull their lonely little peepees." Hart laughed.

Ms. Byrne was in no mood for humor.

"'And the dynasty. Don't forget that,' my mother interrupted. 'It is for the house of Romanov, and for you, Nicky.'
My father smiled gently, as he always did when reminded that he, the emperor, was the focus of veneration. 'My people are loyal,' he said. 'They may complain, they may go on strike and march in protest and even throw bombs, but when the nation needs them, they respond.'"

"The morgue attendant bobbed his head in acknowledgment of her dry anguish. 'It was a squeeze to put him in.'"

"It was the aroma. The exotic scent of spices: rich, alluring, and almost magical. A scent that would sometimes overpower the freshness in the air and sometimes subtly mingle with it to create a tantalizing bouquet. A scent that would always bring me back to my childhood. My life has been symbiotic with that of spices. Growing up as a spice merchant's daughter in a rustic, British colonial house in Malaysia may seem like a world away, but to this day memories of my childhood come flooding in with even the slightest whiff of spice.

Jade-green lime and tamarind trees lined the cobbled driveway leading to our main house; the sweet-smelling tamarind pods hung like garlands from the trees, welcoming the constant throngs of visitors who must have felt as if they were entertaining my mother's secret spice domain."

"And the Spaniards themselves, who in the name of mercy have wrought cruelties greater than any that were done by the benighted Aztecs, who in the name of Christ daily violate His law to the uttermost extreme, say shall they prosper, shall their evildoing bring them welfare? I am old and cannot live to see the question answered, though even now it is in the way of answering. Yet I know that their wickedness shall fall upon their own heads, and I seem to see them, the proudest of the peoples of the earth, bereft of fame and wealth and honour, a starveling remnant happy in nothing save their past. What Drake began at Gravelines God will finish in many another place and time, till at last Spain is of no more account and lies as low as the empire of Montezuma lies today."

"Mac, Caris's father and the taxi driver, is a wonderful study in vulnerability. Stella, his elder daughter, lives up to her name by playing Lady Macbeth (none of the family attends) and being chosen to represent the school at a national science conference. She is both a point of reference in an inarticulate world for the reader and hugely annoying. This probably sounds pretty depressing."

-- The Observer

'Mrs. Churchill came to love Mother and she seemed fond of me and the animals; but she didn't like men. "Yer don't want to worry about them!" she would say with great scorn. If Father spoke to her, she would sniff in a sort of amused way and, as soon as his back was turned, mutter, "All right, all right, old moustaches." She was a great talker'

CONTENTS

Prologue
1 Mail-Order Gerbils
2 The Gerbil Whisperer
3 Even Girls Like Gerbils!
4 A Navy Man in Kansas
5 Doin' Time in Leavenworth
6 Trading My Bikini for a Horse
7 Dad Buys Himself a Gerbil Farm
8 Who's Going to Marry Her Now?
9 My Sister the Time Traveler
10 Welcome to the Poor Farm
11 Nobody's Business but Ours
12 Do It Yourself or Die Trying
13 The Man Without a Nose
14 My Mom Wears Jodhpurs
15 A Lady Always Wears Underpants
16 Saving the Blond Gerbil
17 Rebellions
18 What a Gerbil Farmer Does for Fun
19 The Gerbil Czar Retires
Epilogue The American Gerbil Show

"ON THE COOL OCTOBER MORNING when Cayetana Chávez brought her baby to light, it was the start of that season in Sinaloa when the humid torments of summer finally gave way to breezes and falling leaves, and small red birds skittered through the corrals, and the dogs grew new coats.

On the big Santana rancho, the People had never seen paved streets, streetlamps, a trolley, or a ship. Steps were an innovation that seemed an occult work, stairways were the wicked cousins of ladders, and greatly to be avoided. Even the streets of Ocoroni, trod on certain Sundays when the People formed a long parade and left the safety of the hacienda to attend Mass, were dirt, or cobbled, not paved. The People thought all great cities had pigs in the streets and great muddy rivers of mule piss attracting hysterical swarms of wasps, and that all places were built of dirt and straw. They called little Cayetana the Hummingbird, using the mother tongue to say it: Semal."

"And so it was that Maju the Storyteller came to her new home. She was possessed of an intellect as sharp as the blade of a newly honed knife, and a beauty so terrible only a few could bear to look upon it. But Maju herself had never had to pass the test of gazing upon her own features. For she was as it was whispered all the truly great drabardi are:

Maju the Storyteller was blind.

The vizier and Maju lived quietly in their quarters in the king's great palace. In the second year of their marriage, Maju presented the vizier with a child. A daughter. They gave to her the name of Shahrazad."

"Trees. Keelie Heartwood didn't think her life could be more depressing than it already was, but the sight of the green forest before her made her feel gray inside. She could already feel the tingling of her allergic reaction. Wood of any kind made her feel sick, but living trees were the worst."

"What are you doing here?" she said.

I could feel the crimson rising like tequila suns in my cheeks. "Um, I had something for your mom."

"What?"

"A book."

...

I picked up the smallest one, a paperback of the Nichomachean Ethics, and carried it to her.

"My mother wants to read Aristotle?"

"Well, I don't know. We were just talking about it."

"Aristotle?"

'"I'm hot."

"It's dry heat. Don't you love it?"

"I hate the sun. Why live in the meteorological equivalent of a smiley face?"

"You're such a stiff, Ethan."'

"Ramblings of a madwoman might be deadly. The same words, spoken in sanity: treason. This truth I have discovered to my woe. Yet, imprisoned within my cell, I find it hard to discern the difference. What is truth? What is lie? God alone knows, for by my soul, I do not. Still, death silences all. And death waits for me beyond this vaulted chamber, its walls etched with the words of prisoners who came before me. Their names haunt me; their pleas for mercy mock me, letters chipped into stone during endless hours."

'Anne smiled and handed Caro her cup. "And yet it did not stop her from making a good match. Your father was besotted."

"It was an intemperate match," Caro said.

"And your father was besotted," Anne said with a grin.

"And my father was besotted," Caro reluctantly agreed.

"The same could happen to you and for you. You are your mother's daughter."

Yes and no, and that was the problem. She was Sophia's daughter, the daughter of a former courtesan, and therefore her pedigree was a disaster. And, yet, though she was Sophia's daughter, she had none of her fire, certainly none of her mystique, and most definitely none of her experience.'

"He didn't know what to make of that, so he turned his mind sharply to the file he had on the Stokes family and the few things it told him about Melanie Stokes. Daughter, adopted at the age of nine after being abandoned at the hospital where Dr. Stokes worked. A bit of a media buzz portraying her as a modern-day Orphan Annie. She'd graduated with a B.A. from Wellesley in '91 and was active in various charitable organizations. One of those I-want-to-give-something-back-to-the-world kind of people. Nine months earlier she'd become engaged to Dr. William Sheffield, her father's favorite right-hand man, then ended it a mere three months later without ever giving a reason. One of those my-business-is-my-business kind of people. She helped take care of her mother, who, as Larry Digger had pointed out, had never been the same since the murder of her first daughter. One of those you-mess-with-my-family-you-mess-with-me kind of people. Whatever."